Anabaptist Center for Healthcare Ethics

Abortion

Paperback, 120pp
Wipf & Stock Publishers
(October 1998)

Abortion and the Early Church:
Christian, Jewish and Pagan Attitudes in the Greco-Roman World

Michael J. Gorman

Abortion was a common practice 2000 years ago. The young Christian Church, growing up in influential centers of Greco-Roman culture, could not ignore the practice. I would church leaders to find abortion?

Gorman examines Christian documents in their Greco-Roman context, concluding that Christians held a consistent position throughout the church's first 400 years.

Paperback, 92 pages
Wipf & Stock Publishers
(March 2003)

Holy Abortion? a Theological Critique of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice

Michael J. Gorman, Ann Loar Brooks

"In the abortion debate,the different sides often hurl accusations at one another that lack adequate backing. That is why this book is so important. Michael Gorman and Ann Brooks have read what the other side actually says, and the results startle. At least the result should startle anyone who cares about the protection of life. Hopefully Holy Abortion... will be a wake-up call for all who have left the stridency about this issue lull them into indifference. Christian simply cannot give up our commitments to the care of unborn life. This book makes radically clear why that is the case."

-- Stanley Hauerwas (from back cover)

Assisted Suicide, Euthanasia

Paperback, 128pp
Paulist Press
(February 1998)

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Euthanasia and Physician-Assisted Suicide:
Killing or Caring?

Michael Manning

In this brief but informative work, author Michael Manning describes the historical background and conceptual framework within which the current debate over euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide is taking place. While the Roman Catholic position is explored in some detail, the book also addresses the arguments stemming from both philosophical and medical considerations. Using concise, nontechnical language, the author explains the arguments for and against euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide in a clear and evenhanded manner. This book provides an excellent overview for readers who are new to the controversy as well as those readers who wish to deepen their understanding of a complex area of debate.

Paperback, 112pp
William B.Eerdmans
(November 2002)

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Life's Worth:
The Case against Assisted Suicide

Arthur J. Dyck

This exceptionally cogent contribution to an often muddled debate defends legal prohibitions against physician assisted suicide (PAS), while urging that "comfort-only care"-in which life-sustaining treatments may be discontinued-should be available for terminally ill patients. While it addresses a range of questions, the book centers on our intuitions of what makes killing wrong, introducing notions of an inalienable right to life, humans' natural love of life and the sanctity of human life. Dyck, professor of population ethics at Harvard, displays a strong grasp of relevant issues in ethics, law and political philosophy, and represents opposing views with scrupulous accuracy. His methodical (and, at points, highly original) critique of justifications for PAS avoids the sensationalism that easily creeps into this topic. Dyck devotes more attention to the likes of Timothy Quill than Jack Kevorkian, and engages moderate positions-those accommodating PAS under narrowly prescribed circumstances-rather than merely scoring easy points against more radical approaches. While Dyck's views reflect a Christian perspective, as is especially clear in the final chapter, he avoids "an appeal to authority as such" in favor of a more general claim that "the obligation to foster and preserve our larger communities is a shared, human responsibility. Loving one's neighbor as oneself is not solely a personal or private matter for Christians or non-Christians...[both] have a shared moral responsibility for the laws and policies that are essential for protecting human life."

Paperback, 128pp
Pilgrim Press
(March 2001)

When Killing Is Wrong: Physician-Assisted Suicide and the Courts

Arthur J. Dyck

Using recent court cases, Arthur J. Dyck offers insightful analysis of the modes of moral reasoning employed in the physician-assisted suicide debate. He shows how physician-assisted suicide may be distinguished from comfort-only care and identifies the harmful consequences that would result from its practice. By closely examining the legal traditions on both sides of the debate, he forges a new synthesis for these traditions to argue against the legalization of physician-assisted suicide.

Christian Bioethics -- General

Paperback, 280pp
William B. Eerdmans
(August 2004)

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Bioengagement:
Making a Christian Difference Through Bioethics Today

Editors:
Nigel M. De S. Cameron, Scott E. Daniels, Barbara J. White

While the Christian church has experienced extraordinary growth over the last century, Western culture has continued its seemingly inexorable drift into post-Christian forms. The contrast between our burgeoning churches and the scant impact that Christians have on public policy, the university, or the professions is distressing. And nowhere is this development more evident -- and more consequential -- than in the field of bioethics, where the dignity of human beings is constantly open to redefinition, and where much of our inheritance is coming under withering fire from those whose values are radically distinct from the Judeo-Christian tradition. This new volume takes seriously the Christian mandate to engage modern culture, giving specific attention to the urgent need for moral leadership as we encounter the difficult challenges posed by biotechnology. These insightful chapters by twenty leading activists, academics, and professionals discuss the contributions that a Christian perspective can and should make to the biomedical debate in today's most important forums -- public policy and law, education, media, health care, and the church itself.

Paperback, 421pp
William B.Eerdmans
(October 2003)

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Reading the Bible
in the Strange World of Medicine

Allen Verhey

"In this excellent book Alan Verhey reconfirmed his standing as today's foremost expositor of the ways that a nuanced reading of Scripture can both in form and reform the moral minimalism of recent secular bioethics. Verhey analyzes a wide range of topics, including genetic interventions, abortion, assisted reproductive technologies, end-of-life decisions,assisted suicide, and health-care allocation in an era of fiscal scarcity. He rejects simplistic readings of either Scripture or of these difficult issues and instead explores, with a rich blend of insight, analysis, and exhortation, how attending to Scripture can challenge the 'strange' ethos of modern medicine -- a medicine that focuses on procedures for informed consent rather than the substance of what is chosen, that reinforces an unbiblical dualism between our power to choose and the conditions of our embodiment, and that distorts the virtue of compassion by reducing patients to their pathologies. Throughout his discussion Verhey emphasizes the need for the church to be a community of memory, deliberation, and moral discernment."

-- Andrew Lustig

(from back cover)

End of Life

Audio Series (6 CDs)
Hospice Foundation of America

Clergy to Clergy: Helping You Minister to Those Confronting Illness, Death and Grief

With overwhelming daily demands placed upon them, clergy need a simple way to learn more about grief and bereavement to help them both minister to others and see to their own needs as caregivers.

The audio series program features prominent experts:

Rev. Anita L. Bradshaw; Rev. Kenneth J. Doka, PhD; Rabbi Earl A. Grollman, DD; Rev. Paul Irion; Dr. Therese A. Rando, PhD,

Each topic is conversational in format, and includes practical suggestions and coping strategies.

Topics:

Counseling Those With Life-Threatening Illness
Counseling the Bereaved
The Funeral Ritual: Empowering Healing
Your Faith Community as a Source of Support
When a Child Dies
Helping Children Cope with Loss
Facing Illness as a Family
Facing Grief as a Family
Complicated Mourning
Caring for Yourself
What is Grief?
Coping with Loss

Hospice Foundation of America
VHS Video (2005)

Living with Grief:
Ethical Dilemmas at the End of Life

A panel of noted ethicists, educators, gerontologists, and hospice experts who examine timely and important issues regarding the social perspectives of medical ethics and how various health care settings may influence ethical decisions in hospitals, nursing homes and hospices. The panel also examines how cultural differences may influence ethical choices.

Intended for anyone involved in caregiving or dealing with end-of-life issues, this program offers constructive advice to those who are facing the difficult circumstances that surround caring for someone who is dying. (Also available on DVD)

Panel:
Kenneth J. Doka, PhD, MDiv
William H. Colby, JD
Charles Corr, PhD
Richard Fife, PhD
Jack Gordon, Chairman and CEO, Hospice Foundation of America
Bernice Harper, MSW., MSc.PH, LLD
Bruce Jennings, Senior Research Scholar
Bill Lamers, MD

Paperback, 192pp
Johns Hopkins University Press
(May 2000)

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The Moral Challenge of Alzheimer Disease: Ethical Issues from Diagnosis to Dying

Stephen G. Post

Society today, writes Stephen Post, is "hypercognitive": it places inordinate emphasis on people's powers of rational thinking and memory. Thus, Alzheimer disease and other dementias, which over an extended period incrementally rob patients of exactly those functions, raise many dilemmas. How are we to view--and value--persons deprived of what some consider the most important human capacities?

In the second edition of The Moral Challenge of Alzheimer Disease, Post updates his highly praised account of the major ethical issues relating to dementia care. With chapters organized to follow the progression from mild to severe and then terminal stages of dementia, Post discusses topics including the experience of dementia, family caregiving, genetic testing for Alzheimer disease, quality of life, and assisted suicide and euthanasia. New to this edition are sections dealing with end-of-life issues (especially artificial nutrition and hydration), the emerging cognitive-enhancing drugs, distributive justice, spirituality, and hospice, as well as a critique of rationalistic definitions of personhood. The last chapter is a new summary of practical solutions useful to family members and professionals.

Genetics

Paperback, 208pp
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
(August 2003)

A Christian Response to the New Genetics: Religious, Ethical, and Social Issues : Religious, Ethical, and Social Issues

Edited by
David H. Smith and Cynthia B. Cohen

Scholars of ethics, science, medicine, and theology contribute to the debate over the use of genetic powers, in essays on topics ranging from genetic manipulation and testing, to health insurance and the moral status of embryos. Their essays conclude, in some cases, that the best we can expect as citizens is to learn how to cope with moral uncertainty. Smith (Poynter Center, Indiana U.) and Cohen (Kennedy Institute of Ethics, Georgetown U.) edit nine chapters including creating and shaping future children, the economics and politics of the new genetics, and the role of the church.

Paperback, 176 pages
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
(November 2003)

The New Genetic Medicine: Theological and Ethical Reflections

Thomas A. Shannon and James J. Walter

From dramatic advances in medical genetics and biotechnology, controversies have emerged in the application of these techniques over the control and design of living organisms. This book brings together the seminal essays of two Catholic moral theologians in an effort to identify the key ethical and theological questions raised by the new genetic technology. Roman Catholic tradition meets modern medicine in dialogue to bring issues of faith, science, and ethical decision making into perspective.

Narrative Ethics/Stories/Ethics of Care

Hardcover, 168pp
Georgetown University Press
(March 2004)

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Conversations on the Edge:
Narratives of Ethics and Illness

Richard M. Zaner

At the edge of mortality there is a place where the seriously ill or dying wait—a place where they may often feel vulnerable or alone. For over forty years, bioethicist cum philosopher Richard Zaner has been at the side of many of those people offering his incalculable gift of listening, and helping to lighten their burdens—not only with his considerable skills, but with his humanity as well.
The narratives Richard Zaner shares in Conversations on the Edge are informed by his depth of knowledge in medicine and bioethics, but are never clinical. A genuine and caring heart beats underneath his compassionate words. Zaner has written several books in which he tells poignant stories of patients and families he has encountered; there is no question that this is his finest.

In Conversations on the Edge, Zaner reveals an authentic empathy that never borders on the sentimental. Among others, he discusses Tom, a dialysis patient who finally reveals that his inability to work—encouraged by his overprotective mother—is the source of his hostility to treatment; Jim and Sue, young parents who must face the nightmare of letting go of their premature twins, one after the other; Mrs. Oland, whose family refuses to recognize her calm acceptance of her own death; and, in the final chapter, the author's mother, whose slow demise continues to haunt Zaner's professional and personal life.

These stories are filled with pain and joy, loneliness and hope. They are about life and death, about what happens in hospital rooms—and that place at the edge—when we confront mortality. It is the rarest of glimpses into the world of patients, their families, healers, and those who struggle, like Zaner, to understand.

Paperback, 368pp
Georgetown University Press
(April 2002)

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Medicine and the Ethics of Care

Editors:
Diana Fritz Cates, Paul Lauritzen

In these essays, a diverse group of ethicists draw insights from both religious and feminist scholarship in order to propose creative new approaches to the ethics of medical care. While traditional ethics emphasizes rules, justice, and fairness, the contributors to this volume embrace the ethics of care, which regards emotional engagement in the lives of others as basic to discerning what we ought to do on their behalf.

The essays reflect on the three related themes of community, narrative, and emotion. They argue for the need to understand patients and caregivers alike as moral agents who are embedded in multiple communities, who seek to attain or promote healing partly through the medium of storytelling, and who do so by cultivating good emotional habits. A thought-provoking contribution to a field that has long been dominated by the ethics of principles, Medicine and the Ethics of Care will appeal to scholars and students who want to move beyond the constraints of traditional ethics of principles.